Patrick is an unsung hero here at Corvus. He is the man who
quietly gets on with it and is at every show, selling and sketching, in short,
in the hideous language of advertising; Patrick is our unique selling point. Patrick
has been around since Corvus began and has been an essential asset from day one.
You may know him from his involvement in The Baker Street
Irregulars, Patrick has helped to shape the concept in to what it is today. A
shy man I caught up with hi recently to ask him those six questions.
How did you get started in this business?
I have always had a love of comics from as long as I can
remember. I used to draw my own strips as a child trying to emulate the great
artists. I really enjoyed the adventure stories in the Hornet or the Hotspur
and the Commando books. From that I attended a few of the conventions in
England and made contact with other like-minded people, I concentrated more on inking
after meeting a professional at a convention and suggested I work in this area.
I was able to strike up a conversation with another great professional artist
Anthony Williams and he gave me advice and guidance on how to improve, he also
gave me artwork both original and photocopies to practice with. From that help
I got a try-out with Marvel but unfortunately I rushed it because I was moving
house at the time and didn’t get picked up. I worked briefly with Paul J Holden
who now is a very successful artist. By
this time I had met David Morris and we had started collaborating on bits and
pieces. We had always wanted to get our
own stuff out there. David was already published with Force 10 and we
collaborated with other creators with varying degrees of success. With the
introduction of digital printing we could move forward with our own ideas. We
started this with Baker Street Irregulars and with your good self and Tim now
involved our range of titles has grown with more in the wings. We are now
looking for more artists. It’s a great position to be in but a frustrating one
because we want them all out. We agreed from the start that we want a very high
standard in all of our books, quality in both the script art and overall
presentation was imperative. Independent comic’s standards have grown over the
years and the market is very competitive. I believe we have achieved this with
the titles we have now out. We want to be different from other peer titles,
great stories and great visuals.
Who are your influences?
Artists wise it would have to be Alan Davis, John Byrne, the
Buscemas , the Romitas, Steve Dillon the list would be endless, Frank Hampton
from even earlier great art and craft and of course David. Inking wise it would
be Mark Farmer, Andy Lanning, Scott Hanna, Art Thilbert and again many more. I
love all their attention to detail and always wish I could have half of their
talent. I like mainstream creators just as much as indie. In recent years I
have been reading French books from Cinebooks which have great stories and art
and are influencing our approach to our titles.
What are you working on at the moment?
Currently both David and I are working on getting BSI 2 out
over the next few months. I am trying to also polish up on my pencilling and
will maybe take a stab at something in the future. David is the busiest man
working on your very own baby CO2 towards
publishing the first issue next year and the first issue of Dee for Detective
later next year both 48 pages apiece.
What’s coming up?
For me I have written a BSI story arc and have a new
character I have written which will hopefully see the light of day sometime
next year, I have been also inking BSI 2 and hopefully Dee for Detective in the
coming months.
Character or plot, which comes first?
It can vary, the new character I have been fleshing out I
came up with the character and the plot simultaneously. But usually for me it
is character first and then find an environment in which to place the character
and mess up their lives. I like the idea of having the characters and fleshing
them out through the story line rather than having the
character fully formed before the story.
In the film of your life who would play you?
Richard Dreyfuss, my favourite actor. He is far better
looking however he now has my hair colouring and hairline. That’s the sum total
of our similarities.
Thanks Pat, as you say BSI 2 is
coming our way soon and I for one can’t wait to read it. I know it’s going to be a great read.
No comments:
Post a Comment